Archive for October, 2017

An e-commerce platform is required to be updated with time to ensure usage of advanced technical tools and easy availability to online users. The decision to update the platform can result in many good changes for the brand. But the process to update it should be done in an accurate way, unless the website may lose its charm on search engines and pose serious problems to the platform.

If you are planning e-commerce website migration, here are things to remember to ensure a problem-free process:

Prepare List Of Every Important URL On The Platform
Before starting the migration process, it is necessary to get URL of references you may need. In addition, if there are any broken links or existing redirects, add them into the list. If there’s a plan to change URL structure of the platform, ensure not to introduce redirect chains. It may affect the speed of servers and cause search results-related problems. To make the list, one can make use of Screaming Frog.

Decide The Changes
The process of migration may bring lots of structural changes to the platform. It is necessary to stay aware of these changes before finalizing the updates. Here, one should make sandbox to check database on new updated site before making the changes permanent on the domain. This process will help know outcomes of changes. During test implementation, one should ensure that it is set as noindex. It should be removed after the completion of update process. In this step, changes should be included in things like overall site, menu navigation, hierarchy and breadcrumb navigation.

Determine URLs Applied On Updated Site
It is necessary to know how to make page URLs and impacts of migration. Before the process starts, one should ensure that they are aware of URL naming conventions.

Construct Redirect Map: Legacy Site To Migrated Site
Here, one should use their knowledge on URL naming convention and set new guidelines and rules for .htaccess. By doing this, URLs can be redirected to the updated platform.

Attention To Manually Created Links
There will be two types of links on the website: dynamically created and manually created. Links that are static won’t get updated when the platform is updated. If the redirect map part is handled wisely, there will be no reason to worry. In this case, manually created links can be redirected to the new platform.

Attention To Authoritative Pages
Here, one should spend some time to make a list of most authoritative pages. Ahrefs and Open Site Explorer can be used to make the list in an effective manner. Apart from that, one can also use Google Analytics to recognize pages with even one visit in last few months. In this process, it is necessary to ensure that pages with online traffic are preserved carefully. The pages with most number of visitors should be given prominent status.

Keep Tracking Ranking Data
It is necessary to keep a close eye on the website rankings. Various tools, such as SEMrush, can be used to get ranking data in an effective manner. In addition, top keywords and keyword data should also be given the attention. Plus, changes in the keywords before and after the update should also be tracked.

Identify Site Page Prone To Be Missed
The update process should not lead to page missing incidents. If it happens, it could be due to neglecting static pages as the process only handles dynamically generated URLs, or because of inconsistent URL naming conventions. The third reason for the page miss can be problems in internal navigation of pages. All these issues should be considered before starting the migration process.

To avoid any such circumstance, number of URLs should be considered during test implementation.

Monitoring After Migration
Even when the platform is updated, crawl it to ensure everything has been done in an effective way. One should make sure that there’s no issue during the transfer and update process.

SEO, or Search engine optimization, is a modern way to promote a brand’s website and its services online to global customers. SEO strategy can be divided into two categories: On-page SEO and off-page SEO.

What’s off-page SEO? How It Different From On-page SEO?
Off-page SEO is a strategy where content and website links of company are used in a manner that services could be promoted and the website gets more and more online traffic. In the on-page SEO, content on the website is used in a way that improvement could be made in search engine rankings. On the other side, other online sources like links are used in off-page SEO to get traffic on the website. The off-page SEO strategies result in increase in positive brand mentions, search engine rankings and traffic on the website.

Why Off-page SEO Is Important?

Although the on-page SEO brings direct traffic to the website and improves search engine rakings, off-page SEO has a vital role in search engine optimization which makes it a necessary part of the strategy. The major objective of off-page SEO is to receive positive review for a brand’s website and increase positive interaction for the brand.

But there are various off-page SEO strategies that should be used the right way to make the most of SEO. These strategies fall under three major SEO parts: Brand, Audience and Content.

1. Brand: It is essential to make and represent a product in an interesting way. The off-page SEO strategies that fall under brand sector are:

I. High-quality Product, Services

The SEO part of a website or brand becomes easy when it has an impressive appearance or it show its high-quality from the very beginning. When people, online of offline, come to know about such a product, they talk about it. Concerns of customers should be taken care of in case of existing products, and benefits of new products should be provided to potential audience online.

II. Customer Service

There is no need to write about the consequences of poor customer services and how it can damage a brand, as everyone knows about them. Customer service should be available to every customer, and there should be spokespeople stay in contact with online as well as offline customers to handle their product-related queries.

III. Close Eye On Intent Of Online Users

To grab attention of an online user, it is necessary to make them aware of a product and its benefits over its counterparts. In addition, it is also important to understand the requirement of customers from a product. This could be done by staying in contact with online users, talking to them and taking part in online discussion threads.

2. Audience: The easiest trick to understand the customers’ requirements is interacting with them. To make people interested in a brand, the off-SEO strategy must have:

IV. Responsive Presence Over Social Media

In addition to search engines, online users visit social media to learn more about their requirements and solutions for them. So, it is necessary to make social media a part of off-SEO strategy. To make the most of social media, there’s a need to stay active on different social media platforms and interact with online visitors. In addition, if someone has a query related to a brand or its services, it should be resolved as soon as possible.

V. Stay In Touch With Social Media Users

Various social media platforms help in getting traffic for a website. This traffic can further lead to clients for a company. Social media can help a company in getting clients for a long time and build long-term relationship with them. To make the most of off-page SEO, it is essential to stay in touch with clients and contact them whenever they require the services.

The Internet has lots of online forums and blogs where several users across the globe participate and discuss various topics. By participating in such forms and blogging websites, a company can broaden their customer base. But the comments should be made on relevant topics and only the potential audience should be targeted.

VII. Say No To Guest Blogging

The strategy may surprise many, but guest blogging for links is a time-consuming process. This trick could be used when it is about impressing top publishers or influencers online. Instead of working on special guest posts for links, comments on famous blogs should be left. But it is necessary to ensure that the links are matching the publisher.

3. Content

Content is king in all kind of promotional strategies. When people are asked to think of content, they visualize text, images and videos. But in reality, it gives overall experience of a brand. Here’s what could be done with content in case of off-page SEO:

VIII. Work On Different Content Types

Don’t hesitate to do experiments with content. In addition to text, videos and images serve many benefits to promote a brand. In this case, videos should be posted on sites like YouTube, and events should be shared through Facebook Live. Other platforms like Imgur, Flickr and Snapchat can be used to post images and videos related to the brand.

In the modern world, the Internet has becomes a vital part of everyone’s life. Many today do shopping online and get what they want at their doorsteps. They look for online shops, restaurants and service providers of various other fields in the neighborhood. When it is about finding detailed information on a dealer online and near them, most of the online users depend on search engines. According to tech giant Google, people search online about the service provider’s working hours, phone number and clients’ reviews.

According to a Google research, online users trust those dealers in the neighborhood who has complete information online and detailed information about their services. This has made many service providers to get their business listed on online directories and Google My Business (GMB). It not just connects them with potential customers, but also allows them to appear quickly on local search results on search engines. Due to the rising need of GMB to lure local customers, SEO service providers have started considering GMB listing a priority of their online marketing strategies. But SEO has lots of questions for GMB, which are needed to be answered.

Question 1: Who is Google Top Contributor and how they are related to Google?Answer: A Google Top Contributor can be defined as an experienced professional in digital marketing who has detailed knowledge about Google products’ ins and outs. The professional takes part in Google Product Forums and respond to questions posted over there. Those who want to be Google Top Contributor have to spend time on forums and take part in forum conversation. Google keeps a close eye on people making contribution on forums.

In the beginning, a Google Top Contributor has to spend time in searching questions they can answer. With the time and active participation makes an individual ‘Rising Star’. An expert on these forums is invited for Google meetings.

Question 2: Is it necessary to create a Gmail account for new GMB account? Answer: It is a good method to apply if the customer wants to have GMB page and makes the service provider its manager. But if the customer isn’t interested in claiming GMB listing, there are three things to consider:

It is necessary to consult the client regarding the GMB listing and ask for permission to claim it for them.

No need to make a Gmail account. Instead, the service provider can use domain email address of the client as primary address.

The service provider should not use their phone number while creating GMB account for their client. Here, only the client’s information should be shared. This makes easy for the client to get control of their listing when they move to another service provider.

Question 3: I have a restaurant as a client and they’ve recently updated their menu. We noticed that there’s an outdated menu on their Google My Business Page. How did it get there and how can I fix this?Answer: It could be due to scraped menu information from singleplatform.com, an online platform that allows restaurants to display their menu on various search engines. The menu could be removed from Google My Business listing by contacting Single Platform and asking it to remove it. After that, owner of GMB should ask Google My Business support to remove the outdated menu.

Question 4: A former employee verified my client’s Google My Business listing and we don’t know what email address they used. What should I do?Answer: Many service providers experience this problem, but it has a very simple solution. As GMB listing has a verified owner, the authorized owner can get the control back. Here’s what to do:

Use Google account for sign in. Here account that may have been used for listing could be written.

Look for business name and address. If it’s there, select the listing. After that, the right option should be chosen. The options could be: Different email address and request access from the current listing owner.

Question 5: There are fake reviews about my business on my Google My Business listing. Can I get them removed?Answer: Google allows customers to share their experience with a business in the form of reviews. When customers aren’t happy with the services they have been given, they post negative review about a company. Some of those reviews many be fake, but they are difficult to remove.

To help businesses, Google gives ‘mark the flag’ option that a business can use to tell Google that the reviewer has violated the review policy of search engine. However, this will not remove the negative review.

Question 6: What is the right way to contact Google My Business Support?Answer: There are numerous ways to reach GMB support, but the best is via phone support (1-844-491-9665) or Google My Business on Twitter.

Question 7: Where newbie can get information about Google My Business?Answer: Google’s GMB Guide is the perfect place to start with. Here, one can learn about optimizing Google My Business Listing. Apart from that, a beginner can also Search Engine Land’s Local category for more information.